■Weather
Typhoon warning lifted
The Central Weather Bureau lifted its sea warning for Typhoon Imbudo at 2:30pm yesterday as the waters off the eastern and southeastern coasts were no longer threatened by the typhoon. "The typhoon has moved out of the Bashi Channel and the southern part of the Taiwan Strait," a bureau official said. Imbudo brought heavy rains to Taitung and Hualien counties yesterday morning, but the rainfall slowed down in the afternoon.
■ Health
Chen opens new hospital
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said yesterday that it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people with chronic diseases and the elderly in remote areas. Chen made the remarks during the inauguration of the Hsinwu branch of Taoyuan General Hospital. He said that he visited Kuanyin township, Taoyuan County, earlier this month to attend a lotus-flower festival and now was in Hsinwu to celebrate the inauguration of the new hospital, which he said shows that with the concerted efforts of central and local government, Taoyuan County will improve. He said that in Hsinwu and Kuanyin townships, a single doctor has to serve an average of 3,500 residents, which is a far cry from one doctor for every 750 residents in some other areas. This, he said, shows the inadequacy of medical facilities in remote areas. The new hospital can accommodate 30 to 40 beds but will later expand to 200 beds once the rest of its facilities have been finished.
■ Technology
New glowing fish on offer
Taikong Corp, which has the exclusive technology to create fish genetically altered to glow, yesterday unveiled the latest addition to its fluorescent subaquatic menagerie -- a purple glowing zebra fish. The creature, with dark stripes that contain fluorescence genes taken from red coral, will be displayed at a biotechnology exhibition in Taipei from today through Sunday. Taikong first developed a green fluorescent ricefish using jellyfish genes in a 2001 cooperation project with National Taiwan University. The company began marketing the green fluorescent ricefish in May, after spending two years researching and developing technology to ensure the fish are completely sterile. "This will help do away with concerns about influencing the ecological balance and at the same time protect our business interests," the company said. The company is eyeing a global market in the fish worth NT$100 million (US$2.91 million) annually, with orders arriving from China, France, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, the US and the Netherlands.
■ Legislation
Yu prioritizes bills
Premier Yu Shyi-kun designated five draft bills designed to clean up politics as the top priority of the next legislative session that will open in September. Notable among the five bills are a lobbying bill, which, the premier said, will ensure the free and thorough expression of public views while preventing the improper use of money and influence-peddling. Another bill will regulate the political donations made by vested interest groups to political parties. Another two bills will regulate local political parties and allow for the recovery of assets unfairly obtained by political parties. The fifth bill is intended to guarantee public access to government archives. Yu said the five bills will upgrade the country's democracy and prevent business tycoons and gangsters from pulling strings in the legislative process.
Agencies
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods